A fable is "a short story devised to convey some useful lesson, an apologue". A distinctive feature of the fable is that it contains a moral truth.

Some Chinese fables concentrate on a certain period in the development of Chinese fables while others cover almost the entire history of Chinese literature up to the Qing Dynasty. Fables have served to enrich the Chinese language and the morals of these tales have found their way into the language and are still in use up to this day.